Saturday, October 12, 2013

A new doomsday Scenario

In the
modern history, there never has been a dearth of doomsday scenarists,
appearing suddenly on the scene from no where and predicting total
collapse of nations, mostly from developing world, or environment.
Most of these doomsday specialists somehow are always from Europe or
United States. I would always consider the classic case of Paul
Ehrlich, a professor from Stanford University as a forerunner of
these doomsday specialists, who came out with a book in 1968, which
he called as 'Population Bomb.' He had predicted in this book a
bleak future and doom for the Indian people. He said in this book
that in decades of 1970 and 1980, millions of Indians would die
because of starvation, as Indian agriculture was totally incapable of
feeding the rising population. Well everyone knows that nothing of
the sorts happened and today Indian farmers instead of dying from
starvation are producing bumper crops year after year and India is a
major food grain exporter.

Another
popular theme of these so called Prophets of doom, is the climate.
During the 2000 decade, so much of publicity was given to green house
gases and heating of our planet that I had started believing that the
weather in my home town Pune, which is famous for its moderate kind
of environment, would soon turn into some kind of Sub-Saharan
conditions in next few years. Obviously I was wrong and nature has so
far conserved and taken care of the moderate weather of my dear town,
as it has been over last century. The summer temperatures here seldom
exceed 40 deg, Celsius and the pattern still continues. The rains
come on time and fall as usual. The October nip is on the dot. The
living conditions are getting horrible but you need to blame influx
of motor vehicles and job seekers to the city. Poor nature carries no
blame for that.

A
huge study based on data and lots of computer modelling has been just
published in the scientific journal 'Nature.'
It talks about the weather change in a different terminology and uses
a phrase it lables as “Departure Temperature.” This so called
departure temperature is “
the moment when average temperatures, either in a specific location
or worldwide, become so impacted by climate change that the old
climate is left behind.”
This report
projects that almost all the livable areas of the the Earth,would
pass climate departure by 2047. In other words, by 2047, the present
pattern of world weather would change completely. The report also
gives years by departure temperature would have passed in dozens of
specific cities. A city is supposed to hit "climate departure"
year, when the average temperature of its coolest year from that year
onwards would be projected to be warmer than the average temperature
of its hottest year between 1960 and 2005.

Consider
my home town Pune, for which the departure temperature is suggested
as 2045. This means that the average temperature of every year after
this is likely to be higher than the highest yearly average
temperature of Pune during years 1960-2005. In a layman's language,
after 2045, the people living in Pune city would start feeling the
climate change. The report also considers two scenarios. The first
scenario, which it calls “without carbon mitigation,' is what would
happen with business as usual or no steps taken to reduce carbon foot
print. The second scenario is called by the report as “with carbon
mitigation,” and which means that the city has undertaken steps to
reduce carbon foot print. For my city of Pune the departure
temperatures have been estimated as 2037 and 2055 in these two
scenarios.

Let
us quickly see the departure years for few more cities in India. For
Chennai and Mumbai cities, the departure temperatures under two
scenarios are likely to be 2034 or 2051 and for New Delhi 2050 or
2081. The departure temperatures world wide are given in two images
for two scenarios.

The
report says “ the unprecedented heat starts in 2020 with Manokwa,
Indonesia. Then Kingston, Jamaica. Within the next two decades, 59
cities will be living in what is essentially a new climate, including
Singapore, Havana, Kuala Lumpur and Mexico City. By
2043, 147 cities, more than half of those studied, will have shifted
to a hotter temperature regime that is beyond historical records. The
first U.S. cities to feel that would be Honolulu and Phoenix,
followed by San Diego and Orlando, Florida. in 2046. New York and
Washington will get new climates around 2047, with Los Angeles,
Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Seattle, Austin and Dallas a bit later.”

The
year 2047, according to this report is all important threshold year
with whole world continually increasing emissions of greenhouse gases
from the burning of coal, oil and natural gases. If the world manages
to reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases, that would
be pushed to as late as 2069.This really means that in any case, we
are heading for a climate disaster, either in 2047 or 2069 depending
upon our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

So
what do we do with report? Senior citizens like me would be happy to
note that as long as we are here, things are not likely to change
much. The younger generations are likely to be affected. But even if
we reduce green house gases, we can only push the departure year by
20 odd years. That is no big deal.

Though
I have great respect, for the scientists, who have come out with
these predictions with some 39 different computer simulation models
and looked at hundreds of thousands of species, maps and data points,
I have a feeling that things may not turn out to be this gloomy. The first
reason for my feeling is that nature does not follow any mathematical
models and we have not yet understood it even to a fraction of a
percentage. Secondly I have great respect for the ingenuity of man.
If the situations become that serious, the man would find a solution
so he survives. If the cities really become unlivable as the report
suggests, humans can always migrate to underground.

If
one studies history of earth, there had been far worst situations
like ice ages and 1000 year long nuclear winters due to meteorites
hitting the earth or outbursts of giant volcanoes. The mankind has
survived all such catastrophes that have happened during its
existence. This warming of earth may not turn out to be a catastrophe
of that kind, which would challenge the very existence of the
mankind. I would not be too much worried.